Tag Archives: Zero Hedge

The Problem Of Illegal Immigrant Gangs Is Spreading

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On Friday, Zero Hedge posted an article about a problem a Texas oil company is having with Venezuelan gangs who are in America illegally.

The article reports:

It’s only going to get worse from here, as the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous open border policies have now come to a ‘neighborhood near you’ (for some of you). In the past week, we saw armed Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua members terrorize the northern Denver suburb of Aurora and other sanctuary cities run by far-left Democrats. New concerns out Thursday afternoon indicate critical infrastructure is now under threat from migrant cartel members. 

According to Libs of TikTok, a Texas-based oil/gas company issued a memo to employees informing them that police and the FBI have warned armed Cuba and Venezuela migrant gangs are committing thefts in the Permian Basin (America’s highest producing oil field). 

Here’s the memo:

Industry peers and law enforcement in West Texas (WTX) are aware of a recent increase in organized criminal activity inclusive of violent crimes, gang activity and oil field thefts in and around WTX operational areas. Specifically, regional law enforcement and the FBI advised that gang members emanating from Cuba and Venezuela are organizing and working in concert to commit thefts within the Permian Basin. These individuals and groups are armed, violent in nature and will not hesitate to use force.

Crimes associated with these groups include the theft of oil, diesel fuel, copper wire, and catalyst elements. Recent incidents have also included two assaults by water haulers who were attempting to steal oil from WTX oilfield sites. After the thieves were observed by witnesses who drove up to investigate, the thieves attempted to use their vehicles to run the witnesses off the road. In another incident, a thief, acting as a spotter and following a water hauler who had stolen oil, also attempted to run a witness off the road. There have been numerous reports of second vehicles acting as spotters for water haulers committing oil thefts.

This is what happens when you have no southern border.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Has Specific Issues He Wants To Target

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is an interesting addition to the Trump team. I am sure there are places where the two seriously disagree, but I suspect there are also places where they strongly agree. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has said for years that he distrusts the pharmaceutical companies who push vaccines and that is concerned about the chemicals being put into our food supply. While I don’t agree with all of his ideas on either subject, he does have some good ideas.

On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an article about one of the good ideas.

The article reports:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting polluters and supported ‘green’ organizations for environmental justice. He is now setting his crosshairs on the pharmaceutical industry and cleaning up the nation’s food supply chain of ultra-processed foods and seed oils that poison consumers. He has determined that suspending his presidential campaign to team up with former President Trump will be necessary for the strongest success rate in making Americans healthier again, not through big pharma’s Ozempic shots but instead revitalizing small farms and shaking up corrupted federal agencies.

Lifelong liberals like RFK Jr. backing Trump is one of the strongest indicators of just how extreme the ticket, unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats have become. Harris’ team recently announced their first proposed economic policy, which was rooted in communism and included disastrous price controls. It appears the far-left ticket is being advised and heavily influenced by Marxists. 

The article concludes:

Mega corporations, some of which are part of the ‘green’ cult, want greater and greater control over the nation’s food supply chain. Some are even pushing insect-based diets.

The big takeaway from RFK Jr.’s support of Trump is that he believes the correct path to restoring America’s health is not Ozempic shots but revitalizing the nation’s local food supply chains by making small farms great again. He wants to reset the food supply chain system and purge it of ultra-processed foods and seed oils that are killing consumers. He also proposed shaking up federal agencies in health and food that have close ties with ultra-processed food companies. 

For years, we have told readers that it’s critical to support local farmers and put the food supply chain back into the hands of the people—not corrupt mega-corps that flood store shelves with cancer-causing junk food.

Henry Kissinger famously said, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

It’s time for Americans to regain control of the nation’s food supply chains by making small farms great again. Also, boycotting the processed food industry and buying local food is critical.

If Trump wins, RFK Jr. will likely provide tailwinds for small farmers. And Europe will take note as corp/gov’ts have also waged war on small farms. 

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This would be very good for all Americans.

Is Anyone In Washington Ever Held Accountable?

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On Monday, Zero Hedge posted an article about the Congressional investigation into the Biden family finances.

The article reports:

The GOP-led House committees who have been investigating the Biden family shook their fist at the sky on Monday, announcing in a 291-page report that the president engaged in impeachable conduct by helping to enrich his family with millions of dollars through various business schemes to trade on the family name – and then defrauded voters by lying to cover it up, Just the News reports.

The House Oversight, Ways and Means and Judiciary Committees said they believe the evidence from their nine-month investigation establishes that Biden abused his office and violated his oaths under the Constitution, according to the 291-page report reviewed by Just the News. 

Obviously this would have been infinitely more helpful even a few months ago when there was time for the GOP-controlled House to take action (particularly before the DOJ concluded that Biden is too senile to prosecute), but hey – better late than never.

The article concludes:

According to Just the News:

The committee cited evidence that Biden “actively participated” in an influence-peddling conspiracy by attending dinners with his family’s foreign associates and speaking to them over the phone. These interactions were documented by email evidence and testimony from several of Hunter Biden’s ex-business partners, including Devon Archer and Jason Galanis.

The committees also said evidence shows Hunter Biden used his father’s official position as vice president to “garner favorable outcomes in foreign business dealings and legal proceedings.”

Beyond Biden’s conduct as vice president, the report argued the Justice Department during his presidency deviated from normal practices in order to provide favorable treatment to Hunter Biden, throwing up roadblocks in the investigation and preventing attorneys from pursuing certain avenues of inquiry, as two IRS whistleblowers testified to the House Ways and Means Committee. -Just the News

The report also alleges that Biden engaged in a coverup by lying about he and his family’s conduct.

“President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift,” the committees wrote. “In doing so, he abused his office and, by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office, has defrauded the United States to enrich his family.“

As JTN notes, the report is unlikely to result in a formal impeachment since Biden has stepped out of the 2024 race and is coasting towards January 2025 as the lamest of ducks.

I don’t think impeachment is reasonable at all–I think when you look at the timeline–the continuous breaking the law for years–many family members belong in jail.

Altering Headlines

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On Tuesday, Zero Hedge posted an article about a campaign tactic being used by the Harris, Walz campaign that is very misleading.

The article reports:

Despite corporate media’s unabashed u-turn to support Kamala Harris, her campaign has been busted creating made-up headlines next to the names of real news outlets to trick people into thinking they’ve stumbled upon the real thing, Axios reports.

The article includes a few screenshots of the fake headlines:

Just for the record, President Trump has made it very clear that abortion is a states’ issue. It falls under the Tenth Amendment. Roe vs. Wade was unconstitutional because of the Tenth Amendment, and any effort to ban abortion nationwide would be unconstitutional for the same reason. The issue of abortion is left to the states, so that the voters in each state can choose. I will say that I think it is criminal that abortion is a billion-dollar industry selling aborted baby body parts, but each voter has the right to evaluate that fact.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, according to Google’s ad transparency center, the Trump campaign isn’t running these types of ads – and says that because ads on Search are prominently labeled as “Sponsored,” they’re “easily distinguishable from Search results.” A Google spokesperson added “we’ve provided additional levels of transparency for election ads specifically.”

Nevermind that news outlets pay to promote their own articles all the time.

And nevermind that there was a “glitch” which hid the ad disclosure.

A source familiar with the Harris campaign’s ads team said the campaign buys search ads with news links to give voters searching for information about Vice President Harris more context.

      • The campaign has complied with all of Google’s rules, although a technical glitch in Google’s Ad Library made it appear as though some ads lacked the necessary disclosures Google requires when they ran. (A Google spokesperson confirmed the glitch and said it’s investigating what happened.)
      • “Election advertisers are required to complete an identity verification process and we prominently display in-ad disclosures that clearly show people who paid for the ad,” the spokesperson said. -Axios

That said, according to Google the ads don’t violate its rules – however other platforms have taken action against such deception. Facebook, for example, banned advertisers from editing text from Instant Article news links in their ads in 2017, citing its “continuing efforts to stop the spread of misinformation and false news.” 

A candidate so good they have to deceive voters…

If the polls really show that they are winning, why are they cheating?

Preparing To Cheat

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On Friday, Zero Hedge reported that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has reinstated unsupervised ballot drop boxes for the 2024 election. Anyone who is familiar with the movie 2000 Mules understands the problem with that ruling. On a lighter note, if President Biden is forced off the ballot, all of the phony ballots prepared for the November election will have to be scrapped.

The article reports:

In a 4-3 decision that reverses their own 2022 prohibition on unmanned dropboxes, the justices agreed with Democrats who argued that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had previously misinterpreted the law in its 2022 ruling, and wrongly concluded that absentee ballots can only be returned to a clerk in their office, and not to a drop box that is located elsewhere.

“What if we just got it wrong?” said Justice Jill Karofsky during May arguments. “What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?”

Attorneys representing Republican backers of the 2022 ruling argued that there have been no changes in the facts or the law to warrant overturning the ruling that’s less than two years old.

In 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court switched from a Republican majority to a Democrat majority. That explains the change in the voting process. At some point you have to ask yourself why the Democrats are so focused in preserving voting practices that enable cheating.

Things To Think About Before You Vote

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On Friday, Zero Hedge posted an article about some things that the Biden administration will not be talking about during the presidential campaign.

These are the facts:

1. It takes the typical U.S. household $1,069 more a month just to purchase the same goods and services that it did three years ago.

2. Two-thirds of the respondents to one recent survey indicated that they had to take action to deal with rising financial stress within the past year.  Those actions included “cutting back on spending, skipping monthly bills, or taking an additional job”.

3. Home insurance rates have risen by 38 percent since 2019.

4. Home rental prices are up 30 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

5. A whopping 61 percent of U.S. renters cannot afford the rent on a median-priced apartment in the United States right now.

6. Gasoline prices are up 46 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

7. The average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage is up 148 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

8. According to Zillow, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home in this country has almost doubled during the past four years.

9. One recent poll discovered that 44 percent of retired Americans are considering going back to work because the cost of living has become so oppressive.

10. New home sales fell 11.3 percent last month.

11. Pending home sales are dropping at the fastest rate ever recorded.

12. According to the House Budget Committee, there have been more than 8 million migrant encounters nationwide while Joe Biden has been in the White House.  We truly are in the midst of an immigration crisis that is far greater than anything that we have ever witnessed before.

13. Thanks to our unprecedented immigration crisis, the homeless population in the city of Chicago actually tripled in just one year.

14. Murder rates are up by double digit percentages in many major U.S. cities this year.

15. Continuing jobless claims just shot up to the highest level in almost three years.

16. The number of job openings in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in more than 3 years.

17. Rite Aid just announced that it will be closing 27 more stores.  That is on top of more than 500 stores that it has already decided to shut down.

18. Walgreens plans to close approximately one-fourth of its 8,600 U.S. stores.  If the economy really was “booming”, why would they be doing this?

19. Today, 20 percent of the entire population of the state of California is living in poverty.

20. According to one recent survey, 46 percent of Americans don’t even have 500 dollars saved up.

21. So far, the U.S. has spent a total of approximately 175 billion dollars on the war in Ukraine, and the Russians are still winning.

Hopefully, President Trump will mention some of this during his campaigning.

Is This The Beginning Of Telling The Truth?

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On Wednesday, Zero Hedge posted the following headline:

AstraZeneca Pulls COVID Vaccine After Admitting Rare Side Effect

Note that the headline says ‘admitting’–not discovering. When did they discover the ‘rare’ side effect.

The article reports:

In yet another damning development for the ‘safe and effective’ crowd, AstraZeneca has announced the worldwide withdrawal of its Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, branded as Vaxzevria, due to a rare but serious side effect. This decision marks the end of the vaccine once hailed as a “triumph for British science” by Boris Johnson and credited with saving over six million lives, The Telegraph reports.

How does anyone know how many lives the vaccine saved? How many people would have not gotten Covid or survived Covid without the shot? There really is no way to track that because there is no way to set up a control group.

The article notes:

Legal experts and victims, however, see the withdrawal as a vindication of their long-held concerns over the vaccine’s safety. “To those who we represent, all of whom have suffered bereavement or serious injury as a result of the AstraZeneca vaccine, this decision to withdraw marketing authorisation, ending the usage of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the EU, will be welcomed,” said Sarah Moore, a partner at Leigh Day, the law firm representing many of the claimants.

“It will be seen as a decision linked with AstraZeneca’s recent admission that the vaccine can cause TTS, and the fact that regulators across the world suspended or stopped usage of the vaccine following concerns regarding TTS.”

Victims and their families have reported a range of severe reactions, from fatal thrombosis to lasting disabilities, sparking a debate over the adequacy of vaccine safety monitoring and compensation for vaccine injuries.

Kate Scott, whose husband suffered a permanent brain injury after receiving the vaccine, expressed mixed feelings: “AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine no longer being used in the UK or Europe, and soon the rest of the world, means no one else will suffer from this awful adverse reaction,” she said. “They say it is for commercial reasons, but maybe it’s because it can no longer be seen as being within the acceptable safety parameters, with 445 confirmed cases of VITT, 81 of these fatal in the UK alone.”

I am temporarily swearing off all vaccines until I am convinced that medicine is about caring for people and not providing profits for the drug companies.

Sometimes Congress’ Priorities Are Amazing

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On Monday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

While Congress failed to pass a border security bill over the weekend amid a flurry of billions in international aid to Ukraine and Israel, they did set aside $3.5 billion for “Migration and Refugee Assistance” for the State Department to “address humanitarian needs of vulnerable populations and communities.”

While written in an absurdly broad brushstroke that’s going to be open to interpretation, X user ‘Oilfield Rando‘ suggests that the funds will be used “to pay the NGOs coordinating the illegal invasion at our southern border, and providing all the freebies once they’re in.”

The article includes the following screenshot from Twitter:

It really is time for a new Congress.

Be Careful How Much You Skim

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On Sunday, Zero Hedge posted an article with the following headline:

Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

I think this comes under the heading “You can’t make this stuff up.” Democrats in Congress have consistently blocked an audit of how money sent to Ukraine is spent, so Americans really have no idea where their tax dollars are going.

The article reports:

As Seymour Hersh recently reported, CIA Director Burns had to warn Zelensky to stop stealing so much money.

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns.

His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.

The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.

Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else.

“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,”the intelligence official told me.

Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.

The article concludes

But, remember, the first rule of sending money to corrupt Ukraine is… you don’t talk about how corrupt Ukraine is (or you get impeached).

 

Standing Up For Women Athletes

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On Friday, Zero Hedge posted an article about a soccer team in the NorthWest Association, a league in Australia.

The article reports:

Calling itself the “biggest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary football club in the world,” the Flying Bats FC has made international headlines for fielding 5 self-identifying transgender players, with at least nine transgender players in the wider NorthWest Association.

Critics have said the Bat’s domination of the four-week pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, which followed an undefeated season in 2023 that produced scorelines disproportionate to other teams’ results, was a direct result of the inclusion of male-born transgender players.

According to the feminist and pro-woman online news source, Reduxx, president of St. Patrick’s Football Club Frank Parisi said a March discussion over the Flying Bats FC’s ease of victories had prompted an informal meeting with stakeholders of the Northwest Sydney Football Association to address “concerns around how implausible it has become for any team to win against the Flying Bats as well as physical safety concerns.”

Incensed by the Flying Bats’ domination, other clubs asked the league’s governing body Football NSW to force them into playing in a mixed-sex league.

One club official told the Daily Telegraph, “Our girls are here to play for fun and expect to play in the female competition. They did not sign up for a mixed competition. It was so disheartening for them to see the huge difference in ability—they’re killing it.”

The involvement of transgender athletes in sports is a current hot-button issue, as policymakers grapple with how to balance the effects on women’s players, versus the “rights” of female-identifying players born as biological men

Any soccer team with biological males on it is going to beat a team composed of only biological women. Although there are occasionally women who have the muscle structure to compete with men, they are rare. This is totally unfair competition. It is like adding five professional baseball players to a high school team so that they can have a winning season. Kudos to the women who walked away from the unfair competition.

Cooking The Books

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The Biden administration claims that the economy is really doing well. Some of us who buy gasoline or shop at grocery stores might not agree with that statement. The other claim has been that there is a booming job market. Our city is have layoffs in some of our local companies, is yours? There seems to be something fishy here. On March 29th, Zero Hedge posted an article explaining what was fishy. This is one of those articles when I post what I don’t totally understand, so please be patient. I have very little to add–the article says it all.

The article reports:

The first red flags emerged in the summer of 2022: that’s when the Biden Labor Department started well and truly rigging the labor market data.

Regular readers may recall that it was back in July of 2022, when we first warned that something had “snapped” in the labor market: that’s when a striking discrepancy emerged between the number of US Payrolls (as measured by the BLS’ Establishment Survey, a far more crude and imprecise, yet much more market-moving data series), and the number of actual Employed Workers (as measured by the BLS’ far more accurate Household Survey) . As we showed then, after the two series had tracked each other tick for tick for years, a wide gap opened in March 2022 which quickly grew to 1.5 million jobs in just 3 months…

The article includes the following chart:

 

The article further explains:

And while some of this discrepancy could be explained with the record surge in multiple jobholders, which increased by 1 million since March 2022 to an all time high of 8.6 million at the end of 2023 (as a reminder, the Establishment Survey counts 1 worker have 2 or 3 (or more) multiple jobs as, well, 2 or 3 (or more) separate jobs, even if it is just one worker trying to make ends meet under the roaring inflation of Bidenomics), most of the gap remained unexplained.

There was more: it was around the summer of 2022 that the Biden labor department – in its zeal to show job growth no matter the cost, or quality of jobs – also started fooling around with the composition of the labor market, with most of the monthly gains going to part-time workers, even as full-time workers stagnated or declined. The culmination, as we reported earlier this month, is that in February 2024, the US had 132.9 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Which is great… until you look back one year and find that in February 2023 the US had 133.2 million full-time jobs, or more than it does one year later! And yes, all the job growth since then has been in part-time jobs, which have increased by 921K since February 2023 (from 27.020 million to 27.941 million).

The article concludes:

Putting it all together, we now know – as the Philly Fed reported first – that the labor market is far weaker than conventionally believed. In fact, no less than 800,000 payrolls are “missing” when one uses the far more accurate Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data rather than the BLS’ woefully inaccurate and politically mandated payrolls “data”, and if one looks back the the monthly gains across most of 2023, one gets not 230K jobs added on average every month but rather 130K.

Of course, none of that paints Bidenomics in a flattering picture, because while one can at least pretend that issuing $1 trillion in debt every 100 days to add 3 million jos per year is somewhat acceptable, learning that that ridiculous amount buys 800,000 jobs less is hardly the endorsement that the White House needs.

Which is also why nobody in the mainstream media – which is now nothing more than the PR smokescreen for the Biden puppetmasters, the government and the deep state – will ever mention this report.

As such, we urge all readers to read Philly Fed analysis (link here) and to analyze the excel data (link here) at their own leisure, because in a fascist state, the media no longer works for the people.

Think of these numbers when you vote in November.

Behind The Jobs Numbers

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On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an honest analysis of the jobs report that recently came out. It may be the only honest analysis out there. All of us know that the Biden economy is a problem for middle America–food inflation is in double digits, gas prices are lower than they have been but still a dollar or so a gallon more than they were under President Trump, and utility bills have increased dramatically in some places. President Biden may tell us that the economy is wonderful, but many of us living in it are not convinced. Just as an example, the total increase in my husband’s and my Social Security this year (after deducting the cost of Medicare) was about $115. I suspect that a lot of retirees didn’t even see that much of an increase. I can assure you that our grocery bill has gone up more than that.

The article at Zero Hedge is complicated and detailed. I suggest that  you follow the link and read it for yourselves. I will try to highlight some of it.

The article reports:

The headline data was stellar across the board, starting with the unemployment rate which once again failed to rise – denying expectations from “Sahm’s Rule” that a recession may have already started – all the way to average hourly earnings, which unexpectedly spiked from 4.1% (pre-revision) to 4.5%, the highest since last September, and a slap in the face to the Fed’s disinflation narrative…

… or it would be if one didn’t think of checking how the average rose: well, it turns out that, since average hourly earnings is a fraction, it did not rise due to a jump in actual wages but – since it is earnings over a period of time – “rose” because the BLS decided to sharply slash the number of estimated hours that everyone was working, from 34.3 to just 34.1, which may not sound like a lot until one realizes that the last time the workweek was this low was when the economy was shut down during covid.  Excluding the covid lockdowns, one would have to go back to 2010 to find a workweek that was this anemic.

The article concludes:

…Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 4 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers, but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since July 2018!

This is a huge issue – especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the border – and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened – i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.

Which is also why the Biden admin will do everything in his power to insure there is no official recession before November… and is why after the election is over, all economic hell will finally break loose. Until then, however, expect the jobs numbers to get more and more ridiculous.

Where The Money Is Actually Going

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On Friday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

President Joe Biden is heaping another $5 billion onto a $136 billion pile of taxpayer-funded student loan debt forgiveness, as one of his signature 2024 (vote buying) schemes heading into the 2024 election.

Not only has moral hazard been reduced to an academic concept, shouldn’t taxpayer funds be used to bail out poverty-stricken Americans before people with college degrees who signed their names to a contract for non-dischargeable debt? We digress.

Around 74,000 student loan borrowers will now see debt canceled as a result of administrative changes enacted by the US Department of Education in the latest round of relief – including borrowers enrolled in the government’s income-driven repayment and public service loan forgiveness programs, Bloomberg reports.

Each program requires at least a decade of payment or service to be eligible for relief. Mismanaged federal student-loan plans have left some borrowers without promised relief after making payments for as long as 25 years. -Bloomberg

“My administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in a Friday statement written by other people.

Of those receiving taxpayer-funded assistance, roughly 60% are taxpayer-funded “public servants” – so the snake continues to eat its tail. So, buying votes with voters’ money.

Since when is the federal government able to change the details of a contract mid-stream? Since this is essentially an expenditure, why is it coming from the Executive Branch? The House of Representatives is supposed to be in charge of spending. This should quickly be found unconstitutional by the courts, but I seriously doubt anyone will bring the case.

Who Is UNRWA?

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On December 27th, Zero Hedge posted an article about The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) .

The article reports:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.

The article notes:

In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, UNRWA has, in fact, long been operating as the de facto government. By providing the residents of the Gaza Strip with various services, UNRWA exempted Hamas from its responsibilities as the governing body, such as creating a working economy that would pay for education and healthcare, and allowed it, instead, to invest resources in building tunnels and manufacturing weapons. If UNRWA were not there, Hamas would have been forced to fill the vacuum and, for example, build hospitals and schools and find solutions to economic hardship, including unemployment and poverty.

As senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said, in explaining why no cement could be spared from terror tunnels to build bomb shelters for Gazan citizens:

“The tunnels were built to protect the fighters of Hamas from [Israeli] airstrikes. As you know, 75% of the residents of the Gaza Strip are refugees. It is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect the refugees.”

Hamas was effectively saying: We are responsible for what happens underground, while UNRWA is responsible for what happens above ground.

In addition to evolving into a monster-sized agency, UNRWA has also morphed into a very costly incubator for terror. UNRWA-run schools emphasize and promote the “right of return,” a euphemism for flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians and turning it into a Muslim-majority Islamist state backed by Iran.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Is there any doubt that we need to stop supporting the United Nations? American taxpayer dollars are funding terrorism.

This Could Be Interesting

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One of the things that allows Russia to continue its war against Ukraine is the high price of oil. The sale of Russian oil finances that war. When America was energy independent, the price of oil was lower, and the Russian economy was struggling. Since the Biden administration declared war on American oil, the price of oil internationally has skyrocketed. That has been bad news for consumers, but good news may be on the way.

On Thursday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

Confirming a move which had been widely expected after the internal acrimony at the last OPEC+ meeting, moments ago Angola – also known as China’s gas station in Africa – announced it was leaving OPEC, the country’s news agency ANGOP reported on Thursday, quoting the African producer’s oil minister Diamantino de Azevedo.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, led by the President of the Republic, João Lourenço, the news agency noted. Jornal de Angola also reported the news.

As OilPrice notes, Angola and another African OPEC member, Nigeria, had a spat with the other cartel members before the latest meeting regarding their oil production quotas.

The chart below shows the impact of announcement on oil prices:

 

This could be good news for consumers. It also might result in peace negotiations in Ukraine if the trend continues.

The article concludes:

However, it seems now that Angola doesn’t see an OPEC membership as beneficial anymore after the recent spats over its production quota.  

Angola, which joined OPEC in 2007, holds untapped oil and gas resources estimated at 9 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves and 11 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves.  

The news sent oil, which had caught a bid in recent days on fears about a protracted Red Sea blockage, sharply lower and back to Tuesday levels.

Stay tuned. This could change rapidly depending on the freedom of transport in the Red Sea.

Irony

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On Saturday, Just the News posted the following headline:

UN climate confab may have largest carbon footprint in event’s history, more than 400 jets

Aren’t those the people who want us to drive mini electric cars and eat bugs?

The article reports:

The upcoming United Nations (UN) climate conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), known as COP28, appears likely to have a larger carbon footprint than any previous UN climate change summit.

More than 70,000 people are expected to show up to COP28, about 25,000 more people than last year’s summit, COP27. The conference, which runs from Nov. 30 through Dec. 12, will focus on global strategies to reduce emissions and accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels in favor of green energy.

About 40,000 people attended COP26 in 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland,  while nearly 45,000 people attended the 2015 summit in Paris, France, where the Paris Climate Accords were signed.

Conference attendees have drawn scrutiny in previous years for traveling to and from the event in private jets while lecturing on the importance of reducing emissions. Notably, a luxury concierge service has been offering to arrange private jet charters ahead of this year’s conference.

In addition to flying in and out of the UAE, many attendees will also stay in high-end hotels and have access to “environmentally sustainable, socially responsible, delicious and nutritious food and beverage,” according to COP28’s website.

On October 16, 2021, Zero Hedge posted the following headline:

UN Climate Change Conference Reportedly Using Diesel Generators To Charge Teslas Being Used As Shuttles

Some highlights of that article are posted here.

The article also notes:

One of the key issues to be discussed at COP28 is the shape of a so-called “loss and damages” fund, a de facto international climate reparations program. Special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry recently suggested that the U.S. will pay “millions” into the fund, a number that many activists and representatives of poorer countries find to be inadequate. China is unlikely to have any significant obligations to the fund because it is classified as a developing country, despite its status as the world’s top emitter and second-largest economy.

If you have not yet figured out that the purpose of climate change is to take money away from the countries that have it and give it to China and other ‘developing’ countries, you have not been paying attention.

Is This An Acceptable Statement?

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On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden. This is a statement the White House immediately tried to revise.

The article reports:

In another humiliating gaffe, the 80-year-old Biden suggested that black and hispanic workers don’t have high school diplomas.

“We’ve seen record lows in unemployment particularly — and I’ve focused on this my whole career — particularly for African Americans and Hispanic workers and veterans, you know, the workers without high school diplomas,” he said in televised remarks.

…The White House, of course, went into damage control mode – doctoring the official transcript to read something Biden never said, and claiming that there was supposed to be the word “and” separating the minority groups and veterans, from ‘those without high school diplomas.’

“We’ve seen record lows in unemployment particularly — and I’ve focused on this my whole career — particularly for African Americans and Hispanic workers and veterans, you know, and the workers without high school diplomas,” reads the official transcript.

Blacks, hispanics, veterans, and possibly those without high school diplomas took offense, and general mockery ensued.

The article includes the following chart:

An apology is needed.

The Cost Of “Woke”

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Don Surber posted an article at Substack today about the cost of the ‘woke’ culture. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I will post a few highlights here.

The article notes:

As I watched the sudden collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, I marveled once again at how a geezer’s administration run by tokens of diversity can wreck the economy by turning mundane functions — say, unloading transport ships — into extraordinary catastrophes, such as a supply chain backlog.

Train wrecks happen, sure, but it takes a special innate incompetence to have the EPA set fire to the toxic contents spilled over the tracks in East Palestine, Ohio, sending a black cloud into the air that was seen for miles around as it spread the danger over hundreds of square miles.

I am awestruck by the ineptitude of a Department of Transportation that spends billions of dollars not to build roads but to destroy them in the name of fighting racism.

The return of inflation after a 40-year hiatus tops the list of Biden’s calamities. Thus far the administration’s answer is to keep borrowing and spending as if there is no tomorrow in the fervent and erroneous belief that this will make it go away, when in fact all it does is fuel inflation.

No idea is too kooky for these Ivy League-educated idiots. The Los Angeles Times reported, “How white and affluent drivers are polluting the air breathed by L.A.’s people of color.”

The story said, “Angelenos who drive less tend to be exposed to more pollution.

“It may sound like a paradox, but it’s not. It’s a function of the racism that shaped this city and its suburbs, and continues to influence our daily lives — and a stark reminder of the need for climate solutions that benefit everyone.”

The people who live near freeways are poor and the LA Times presumes they all are people of color. Look for Biden and his Band of Bimbos to destroy freeways in Southern California in his second term and turn them into more camps for the homeless. This will continue until liberals decide that because most homeless people are white that homelessness is white privilege and start destroying the camps.

Behind every disaster, of course, is a token that Biden appointed to be the first fill-in-the-blank.

The article points out:

The money poured into SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) like it did to Studio 54 in the coke-craven 1970s and 1980s. Unlike that New York disco, the money was legal and not kept in garbage bags, but the amounts deposited were outside the FDIC’s coverage.

97% of its deposits were uninsured. As the big banks spin this as the fault of the FDIC, remember they seek insurance coverage of money they did not insure. SVB paid insurance premiums for only 3% of its deposits. That is all the money it is entitled to. These are the rules the banks wanted because if the banks wanted the coverage, they would have gotten Congress to cover them.

If you go uninsured and you wreck your car, you pay to fix it. The same should be true with bank deposits. I get that the feds limit their insurance to the first $250,000 of each depositor’s money. But why isn’t there a secondary insurer? Why don’t the Aflac duck and the Geico gecko get together and provide insurance for deposits above $250,000? They could hire Flo to pitch their insurance.

The article concludes:

Zero Hedge pointed out that as it died, SVB still pushed DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion. Zero Hedge said, “You see, SVB believes ‘inclusion ignites innovation,’ although I guess liquidity wasn’t part of the ethos.”

Go woke. Go broke. Have the Fed bail you out.

This situation is the son of the $700 billion bailout from 2008-2009.

Pundits say the bankers learned nothing from that debacle but they learned plenty — mainly that they can ignore the rules because Uncle Sam will always bail them out.

This time, the bailout did not include taxpayer money. Instead, the Fed will print up another $25 billion to feed the fires of inflation. Next time, taxpayer money will be needed because all those banks that are Too Big To Fail are not big enough to cover Biden’s many, many calamities.

And no one will be held accountable.

No, The Biden Administration Has Not Stopped Inflation

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On Tuesday, Zero Hedge posted an article about the current Consumer Price Index and other aspects of the inflation we are currently dealing with. Please follow the link to read the article as it includes multiple charts showing where we are and where we have been.

The article reports:

Inflation accelerated on a monthly basis.

  • CPI increased 0.5%, the most in three months, versus 0.1% in the prior month; on a core basis, it was up 0.4% (versus 0.3%). Both were in line with estimates. On an annual basis, CPI increased 6.4% from the year-ago period versus 6.5% in December, higher than forecasts.
  • Aside from the headline numbers, analysts and markets were also looking at the so-called super-core figure, or core services minus housing. It’s a category that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has singled as a must-watch. That showed some easing, increasing at a slower 0.27% pace in the month and 6.2% from the prior year.
  • Housing contributed the most to the monthly increase in CPI, making up nearly half the gain. Food, gasoline and natural gas also boosted the monthly figure.

…Policymakers have flagged that the road from here on inflation would be bumpy, with some months and categories showing persistent price pressure, though that the overall trend is down. This report, in addition to a blowout January jobs gain, showed that inflation remains persistent in the US economy, and will need further action from the central bank.

The article includes the following charts:

I can only imagine the struggles of raising a family in this economy.

 

Unintended Consequences

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On Wednesday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

As discussed yesterday in “Buyers Balk At Russian Oil Purchases Despite Record Discounts, Sanction Carve Outs” the bevy of Russian sanctions have had the unintended consequence of also freezing Russian oil exports – despite explicit carve outs in terms set by Western nations – as buyers balk and boycott Russian crude sales amid fears that the country’s energy supplies may eventually fall under a sanctions regime anyway, leaving buyers stuck with millions in barrels they can’t then sell to downstream clients.

Today was a clear example of just that: citing traders with knowledge of tenders, Bloomberg reported that Surgutneftegaz (better known as Surgut) failed to award two tenders with combined volume of 880k tons of Urals for March loading.

…In short, there is a sense across the petroleum supply chain that sanctions aren’t done yet or aren’t well-enough understood yet. That’s why things are getting blocked. 

Meanwhile, Energy Aspects estimates that 70% of Russia’s crude trade is frozen but that will drop to 20% when there’s greater visibility on sanctions.

While that’s a reasonable proposition but there is an x-factor: could the final sanctions package actually be even more punitive for the country’s exports? Even if 20% were to end up frozen, that would still be a very bullish final scenario for the oil market; as a reminder, Goldman recently noted that even assuming full Russian output, the market remains undersupplied and continued disruptions will push oil much higher.

So what does the market think? Well, the 10x increase in Brent $200 June calls in the past week should give you a sense of what may be coming.

This is one of those articles I am sharing without having a really good idea of what it says or what it means. However, it seems as if this is information worth noting as the price of oil and gasoline continue their upward climb.

This Isn’t The Way To Negotiate

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On Saturday, Zero Hedge reported that the Biden administration restored sanction waivers for Iran’s civilian nuclear program. The idea was that restoring those waivers would pave the way for a nuclear agreement with Iran. Those of us with a more cynical viewpoint see restoring the waivers as the Biden administration negotiating with itself in order to get Iran to the negotiating table.

The article reports:

The waivers mean any foreign countries, including Russia, China, and countries in Europe, that work with Iran on its nuclear program cannot be targeted by US sanctions. The waivers are an aspect of the JCPOA and were rescinded by the Trump administration in 2020.

The article concludes:

The waiver is a hopeful sign for the JCPOA. Negotiators are expected to return to Vienna soon in what could be the final round of talks, although Iran said earlier this week that “significant issues” remain.

Iran hawks were quick to criticize the move, and State Department spokesman Ned Price insisted that the waivers were not “sanctions relief.”

“We did NOT provide sanctions relief for Iran and WILL NOT until/unless Tehran returns to its commitments under the JCPOA. We did precisely what the last Administration did: permit our international partners to address growing nuclear nonproliferation and safety risks in Iran,” Price wrote on Twitter.

What’s the difference between a civilian nuclear program and a nuclear weapons program? Not a whole lot. Considering the world’s perception of the Biden administration and the strength of America, Iran will probably have a functioning nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it in the very near future.

 

Just When You Thought Things Couldn’t Get More Bizarre…

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On Wednesday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

Illegal immigrants worried about having proper identification to fly can now use an arrest warrant as an alternate form of ID when presenting to airport security, according to a TSA letter obtained by the Daily Caller.

Responding to Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden’s Dec. 15 inquiry about illegal migrants flying across the country, TSA Administrator David Pekoske explained that certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents may be considered acceptable forms of alternate identification for non-citizens, including a “Warrant for Arrest of Alien” and a “Warrant of Removal/Deportation.” -Daily Caller

…The TSA’s Pekoske wrote: “TSA is committed to ensuring that all travelers, regardless of immigration status, are pre-screened before they arrive to the airport, have their pre-screening status and identification verified at security checkpoints, and receive appropriate screening based on risk before entering the sterile area of the airport.”

I truly believe that the TSA has lost its mind. Over the years, the organization has often separated a female passenger from her skin cream because of terrorism concerns, yet they are accepting arrest warrants as acceptable forms of identification for people who are in the country illegally. This makes absolutely no sense.

More Politics Inside The Department Of Justice

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On Sunday, Zero Hedge reported that the Department of Justice has stated that it will not withdraw a controversial memo used to activate the FBI Counterterrorism Division to investigate parents voicing their opposition to a variety of topics – primarily mask and vaccine mandates, and teaching critical race theory. Very questionable people are streaming across our southern border, and the Department of Justice is worried about parents who oppose mask and vaccine mandates and critical race theory. That is not only unbelievable–it’s dangerous to the security of our nation.

The article reports:

This week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed the pre-Christmas response – stating:

“[I]n December we asked why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was getting involved in parents expressing their concerns at school board meetings. Now, just to be crystal clear, there’s no excuse for real threats or acts of violence at school board meetings, but if there are such threats, these should be handled at the local level and the Attorney General should withdraw his memo that started this whole thing.

“Well, a couple days before Christmas, the Justice Department responded to us with just a one-page letter.

“In that letter, DOJ had nothing to say about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was involved in local school-board matters. DOJ just said, ‘We’re not going to withdraw the memo.’ So, the Feds may be keeping track of school board meetings—even if it creates a horrible chilling effect. And, of course the FBI looking over your shoulder would have a chilling effect. Next week the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on domestic terrorism. I hope we’re going to be focusing on the serious threats facing our country—and I hope no one thinks the focus is on our nation’s parents.”

The article also notes:

According to a public statement by Grassley regarding the one-page letter:

“The Department of Justice owes the American people a better answer than just a one-page letter that says nothing about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is involved in local school-board matters. Now more than ever, parents should be their kids’ strongest and best advocates. They have the God-given right to do so. And the Justice Department ought to be doing everything it can to protect that right, not scare them out of exercising that right. Attorney General Garland should withdraw his memo. And he should take Congress’s oversight, and concern for the rights of parents, more seriously.”

Saturday night I watched the movie “The Lives of Others.” It is a foreign film with subtitles about life in East Germany under the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. The movie was made in 2006. It is on Amazon Prime. If you haven’t yet seen it, I strongly recommend it–it gives a glance into what life is like when justice is political.

Da*n The Consumer And Full Speed Ahead

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On Sunday, Zero Hedge posted an article about the impact of some of the Biden administration’s regulations on American consumers.

The article reports:

At a time when the Biden administration is panicking in an attempt to keep energy prices down, the House has slapped a “fee” on methane that is being called a “stealth tax” on natural gas and everyone who uses it.

The House bill results in an “escalating tax on methane emissions by oil and gas producers,” a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal points out. The tax will hit $1,500 per ton by 2025 and the fee is supposed to be a contribution to recent promises made in Glasgow to curb methane emissions.

The cost of the fee will obviously get passed along to the consumer, which will then result in even higher energy prices than consumers are already struggling with. 180 million  Americans use natural gas to hear their homes, the report says.

The article concludes:

The WSJ op-ed board calls it a “regressive tax” and says that “Department of Energy notes the average energy burden for low-income families is three times higher than for more affluent households”.

The methane tax “exposes the contradiction at the heart of Democratic climate policy” and clearly violates President Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 per year, the op-ed argues.

The op-ed concludes by arguing that once the methane tax is in place, it’ll be easy to raise over time. Combined with new methane regulations, it’ll continue to raise costs and introduce inefficiencies for producers.

The methane tax is “targeted, punitive and can be linked to higher consumer energy bills,” the op-ed concludes.

We are headed into a cold, dark winter brought to you by the Biden administration’s misguided energy policies.

A Very Good Question

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Zero Hedge posted an article today about President Biden’s recent trip to the climate summit.

The article notes:

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso has called for detailed information on the carbon footprint of Joe Biden’s trip to the COP climate Summit in Scotland, labelling it “bloated” and “counterproductive”.

Considering that the climate summit was a mass meeting of private jets, I think that is a valid question. There is also the matter of diesel generators being brought in to power the Teslas (article here). I really think that if those who attended the summit were actually as concerned about global warming and everyone’s carbon footprint, they might make other travel arrangements than they actually did (I know there is such a thing as car-pooling, is there plane-pooling?). The article notes that it would have made sense to hold the summit virtually.

It seems that the attendees to the climate summit decry the carbon footprint of ‘the common man’ while jetting around in private planes and charging Teslas with diesel generators. Seems a little off balance.